Twitter's landlord says the company is $136,250 behind on payments:
California Property Trust, the owner of the building that houses Twitter headquarters, is suing Elon Musk's social media company for failing to pay $136,250 in rent. According to Bloomberg (via The Verge), the firm notified Twitter on December 16th that it would default on its lease for the 30th floor of the Hartford Building, located at 650 California Street in San Francisco, if it didn't pay its outstanding rent within five days. In a complaint filed this week with the San Francisco County Superior Court, California Property Trust said Twitter failed to comply with the order.
Elon Musk is trying to slash expenses at Twitter as close to zero as possible while his personal wealth shrinks – and this apparently has included falling behind on rent payments at the company's offices.
[...] Twitter did not respond to a message for comment. The company no longer has a media relations department.
[...] Musk defended his extreme cost-cutting measures last month in a late night Twitter Spaces call.
"This company is like, basically, you're in a plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don't work," Musk said on 21 December.
[...] In addition to not paying rent and laying off workers, Musk's Twitter is also auctioning off high-end office furniture, kitchen equipment and other relics from the past, when Twitter had over 7,500 full-time workers around the world and free lunch and other office perks were common. Some three-quarters of Twitter's employee base is estimated to have left the company, either because they were laid off, fired or quit.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday January 05, @03:41AM (3 children)
Sticking debtors with bills is standard operating procedure going into bankruptcy. One reason is to avoid paying by adding those bills to the list of unpaid debts to be cancelled. The other reason is that it is necessary to stiff debtors more or less evenly for strategic reasons.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday January 05, @04:52PM
so, trump stiffs his contractors and even his lawyers, all while claiming to be a stable business genius. we see that musk, once the richest guy in the world, also is following that pattern and is being a DEADBEAT RENTER. of all things!
as a tesla owner, I cant wait to sell the car and say goodbye to the brand forever. its embarassing to even own it, at this point. seriously.
good job, musk. the very people who lined up to buy your products, now cant wait to run away from you and anything you touch.
well done.
quite the genius. both of them. (LOL)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 05, @05:03PM
Of course - screwing over debtors so you can walk away with your own wallet still packed full is the entire purpose of bankruptcy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05, @10:23PM
Doing shit like that before declaring bankruptcy is plain contract breaking. You don't stop paying your bills because you might be broke next quarter.
If you are able to pay your bills, SOP is to carry on paying them - but that's not what's going on here.
Greedo Elmo gave an order to stop paying bills until renegotiated. IIRC, the technical term for that is conversion - one step away from theft. Caveat: I am not a lawyer, and even if I was I sure as fuck wouldn't be one at any company he ran.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday January 05, @04:30AM (2 children)
Prior to Musk throwing the pilot out and hamfisting the controls, Twitter was like a plane whose engines were under-performing and so slowly losing altitude. If it's crashing, it's because he broke it.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday January 05, @07:59AM (1 child)
Does Musk realize that the Gremlin is his own reflection yet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05, @09:18AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqGssI88ucY [youtube.com]
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05, @09:13AM
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-31/us-small-business-rent-delinquency-rates-rise-sharply-in-october [bloomberg.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Username on Thursday January 05, @09:57AM (4 children)
How they could afford all those luxury items before? Just kept raising capital and investing it into those luxuries with no thought for the future?
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by GloomMower on Thursday January 05, @03:47PM (1 child)
I don't think they ever really made a profit, but they were probably way better off before so many advertisers stopped advertising on twitter when Musk took over.
(Score: 2, Troll) by crafoo on Thursday January 05, @05:09PM
payments from the FBI and CIA reduced to 0 too. Bad business, Musk.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday January 05, @04:58PM (1 child)
in the bay area (where I live and work), to GET and KEEP top people, you have to offer good perks. free lunch is one of them and I enjoyed that perk at a few places where I worked, in the past.
look at it this way: an engineer is worth $100 to $200/hour in most corps. if you can get them to stay on site for a stupid little $10 lunch, well, YOU do the math and get back to me if you think its a good use of $10 or not.
when I had lunch at work, a lot of us would fill out plates, go back to our desks and mix eating with work activities. and for me, no getting in the car and having to look for parking at the food place, getting there and getting back. just that, alone, is a time waste and if they can keep you on site, its well worth the $10 lunch.
they dont do this because they love you. its ONLY because it makes they more money. they get free work from you for nearly nothing.
when I hear the beancounters push back against 'free lunch', I have to explain how the world works to them. every fucking time, and lately, more and more of them push back on this and its disappointing to see that perk get cancelled so much, these days; especially when food is 2x as much as it was pre-pandemic (for take-out, at least).
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by corey on Thursday January 05, @10:15PM
Excellent point. I’ma senior engineer at work and the amount of time I waste doing menial paperwork crap is ridiculous. Like filling in forms and getting signoffs for anything from IT (whose main game it is to waste people’s time), ordering any components (web searches, placing orders, getting signoffs myself), requesting any professional development (PD), etc.
I’m going contractor soon so I won’t have to deal with any of this politics any more. The employment market is tight now.